The Velvet Underground album that their producer walked out of: “I don’t have to listen to this shit”
You could argue, you’re not doing music exploration right in your teenage years, if at some point one of your parents doesn’t ask you ‘what’s that noise?’.
The very seed of musical rebellion exists within the volume dial in those years, used to drown out unnecessary distractions and instead bathe in whatever soundscapes stood before you. In the late 1960s, The Velvet Underground gave kids that opportunity.
Come 1968, The Beatles had dominated the landscape pretty aggressively, with the softer landscapes of folk and Americana acting as the only real alternative for interested fans. The raucous days of punk were a few years away yet, but psychedelic rock was beginning to emerge. Its colourful seed had been sown and in the latter part of the decade, we were beginning to see the fruits of their labour.
Simply put, there was an appetite for musical revolution, it just wasn’t entirely clear how that would manifest itself just yet. In 1967, The Velvet Underground presented a pretty compelling argument that the revolution would exist in the colourful realms of Lou Reed’s art-rock movement. Style, sophistication and experimentation would all merge in one to push music further into the depths of psychedelia.
Then just one year later, the band’s mindset shifted. Sensing the perhaps volatile mood on the ground, as New York plummeted towards 1970s despondency, The Velvet Underground changed tack and unleashed hell on the mixing board.
White Light / White Heat was a brutally raucous effort from the band that unflinchingly exposed the raw elements of their recipe, the way they were before they were carefully cooked in a pot of consideration.
Any remnants of the free-thinking flower power movement that ran parallel to their musical release were crushed up into dust and snorted, to provide a high-octane, adrenaline-fuelled record that simply strapped in and let the noise take over.
There was undoubtedly method in the madness, something more profound that the band were after, be it the simulation of a speed rush through John Cale’s bass or the narration of deeply twisted tales. But for the studio engineer of the record, it simply seemed too much.
Recalling the experience of creating that record, Lou Reed said, “We didn’t have money anyway. On White Light / White Heat the engineer left,” adding, “he said ‘I don’t have to listen to this shit’ seriously you know ‘let me know when it’s done’ and away he went.”
But the band were steadfast in their pursuit, unwavering by what could have been deemed as criticism. “No one missed him,” Reed explained. “We kept trying to get the needle in the red,” he admitted, stating, “but that’s that’s actually no good. But you know, we wanted to blow the console up”.
Sure, it acts as somewhat of a blip on The Velvet Underground discography to more part-time listeners, but ultimately it’s a not-so-quiet record that cements the band’s legacy and position as true pioneers within the music industry. Never ones to simply play it safe.
